Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
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Just to get this out of the way first, in case you do not know about one of England’s funniest and most creative men, Steve Coogan, shame on you. Not only will this keep you from catching some of the jokes in this film, as some are based on his former TV character Alan Partridge, and one running gag is about a real-life tabloid headline that plagues Coogan, but you are missing really brilliant humor from a great comic actor. But enough of that, and onto the review of the movie, which is a film about making a film from a novel that is un-filmable. In fact no one in their right mind would attempt to make a movie about this particular novel. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a weighty novel written by Laurence Sterne that is one of those great books famous for being owned but seldom actually read. The book itself is a perfect vehicle for a movie about a novel that one simply cannot film, for this piece of literature is the fictional autobiography of an eccentric English gentlemen that have more digressions, narrative segues and utterly exhausting contrivances than any postmodern works that have ever been written. |
Grade: B+ | Genre: Comedy
This movie within a movie, Tristham Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, is created by prolific director Michael Winterbottom, who gave us: 9 Songs, In This World, 24 Hour Party People, and Welcome to Sarajevo. Winterbottom is a film maker whose thrives on experimentation, and who now has given us a movie about making a film based on an old English novel about writing a novel. Are you confused yet? Well, so are the characters of this film who are trying to make a great movie about a tedious novel, that they have neither read nor understand, and therein lies the fun. As one character states, the book is, “a masterwork of postmodernism before there was any modernism to be post.” Winterbottom, a director capable of anything except repeating himself, delivers a movie within-a-movie in an ingenious, swift, funny, and unpretentious way. With a great British cast of Steve Coogan, Roy Brydon, Gillian Anderson, Dylan Moran and Stephen Fry, who pretend to play themselves and their characters in the film, this movie utterly delights, but unfortunately most will probably have to see it on DVD, as it was not widely released.
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Winterbottom creates a narrative not only about Tristham Shandy (Steve Coogan), who tells the story of his own birth and odd family, but also about the making of the very movie we are watching. Coogan, who delivers this narrative, plays a mocking version of himself in the film (which takes guts in my opinion), and who, in the movie as in real life, is forever identified with his former TV role of the fictional, obnoxious, chat-show host, Alan Partridge. This is where prior knowledge of Coogan comes in handy. Coogan’s character of himself in the movie is as vain, shallow, pompous and egocentric off camera as his Tristram Shandy is in character. Basically Coogan is making fun of actors and himself, and his Steve Coogan is in constant battle with another British comedic actor, Rob Brydon, who in the film insists that they are “co-leads” instead of admitting he has a supporting role. These two lead characters have some of the funniest dialogue I have heard in many years, as they banter over the height of their shoes, the content of the inane book, who neither has read, and various scenes. The opening scene takes place in the make up room where Coogan and Brydon are discussing their billing and the whether Brydon’s historical, old English teeth are the proper shade of yellow. The actors are competitive in a very English way, and the subtly of this dry British wit, is welcomed in a day where American films rely on mindless toilet jokes to be thrown for humor instead of actually writing a witty line. You actually have to listen, think and use your mind to catch all the gems in this delightful film which laughs at the notion of film makers who try to make films out of pretentious dribble. Winterbottom throws Gillian Anderson into the mix, who is the one called, when they believe the film needs a “star” to keep its funding. Anderson accepts the role of the Widow Wadman, Rob Brydon’s character’s great love interest in the book, but Brydon, the actor, just happens to have a ridiculous crush on Anderson as well, adding to the fun.
In addition to the litany of other great British actors who inhabit duel roles in this film and parody themselves, Winterbottom keeps going behind the camera to show us a production on the verge of collapse, and while the movie-within-a-movie is not a new idea, the insightful and honestly funny approach to this film is. Winterbottom has made a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the crazy world of modern film making and the attitudes of those who make them, while at the same times delivering an ingeniously funny film.
Originally Posted: April 4, 2006